Temecula gateway site to become dentist office

Temecula city officials are frustrated by slow pace of remodel work on this building, on corner of Ynez and Rancho California roads, that used to house a real estate office. Commissioners call it an eyesore that should be completed promptly.
— Don Boomer

Temecula city officials are frustrated by slow pace of remodel work on this building, on corner of Ynez and Rancho California roads, that used to house a real estate office. Commissioners call it an eyesore that should be completed promptly.
— Don Boomer

TEMECULA  For years, the building on the northeast corner of Ynez and Rancho California roads was one of the first stops for prospective home buyers visiting the Temecula area.

Inside, visitors from Orange, San Diego and Los Angeles counties could talk to real estate agents and pick up a map that pointed them to tracts of homes in various states of completion or land that was targeted for construction. A huge spike in construction activity in the 1990s and early 2000s led to homes, offices and retail shops taking the place of much of the undeveloped land in the city.

The building, which had been a landmark of sorts for decades, was sold a few years ago.

Late last year, crews showed up to start working on the building, an effort that seemed to portend an imminent transformation of the structure that still bore the marks of the past, such as the offer of "free area maps" on the sign out front.

That work is ongoing but the pace has been less than robust, which has raised the hackles of city officials, including longtime Planning Commissioner Ron Guerriero, who say the building, located at one of the city's focal points, doesn't reflect well on Temecula.

"We can do better than that," he said during a recent phone interview.

A few weeks ago, Guerriero brought up the condition of the building during a commission meeting, noting broken windows and the generally unkempt status of the structure that, he felt, constituted a public hazard.

"It was more of a safety issue, as well as an eyesore issue," he said.

Guerriero and the other commissioners were told last month by Patrick Richardson, director of development services, that the contractor rehabilitating the structure has to keep working on it per the terms of a building permit.

In the event work stops for a long period of time, the city could step in and revoke the permit but, so far, the owner has done enough to keep it, limiting the city's options to basically monitoring the crews' progress.

The owner of the building, worth about $1 million according to the Riverside County Assessor's Office, is working to convert the structure into a dental/medical office, according to city officials.

On city documents, a dentist in Downey, who owns a large ranch near Fallbrook, is listed as the future tenant and a contractor from Anza is listed as the applicant on the license.

The contractor, Mike Machado, said the work is complicated by the structure's history and the directions handed down by the city, which has asked that the building's restoration maintain its longtime look and feel.

"We've run into so many problems with that thing," Machado said. "It's a very slow process. We have to pick up one piece of the building at a time because that building never had a foundation on it."

Told about the commission's concerns, Machado said the "ugly" part of the work should be completed soon and he's hoping to have the entire structure, three mobile homes that had been connected together, complete by the end of the year.